Some notes I made at a meetup around on assertiveness. I don’t regularly attend such meetups but it is good to reflect upon how you communicate and how you look at others communicating.

We need clarity, clarity comes from knowledge.

What is non-assertive? Non-assertive can be passive, but also aggressive or passive aggressive … emotional behaviour.

“A form of behavior characterized by a confident declaration or affirmation of a statement without need of proof. To assert oneself is to affirm one’s rights or position without either aggressively transgressing the rights of another (assuming a position of dominance) or submissively permitting another to ignore or deny one’s rights or rightful position.” – assertiveness. (n.d.) Miller-Keane Encyclopedia and Dictionary of Medicine, Nursing, and Allied Health, Seventh Edition. (2003).

Some are…

Tijdens de verkiezingen in Iran, en vooral toen de protesten luider werden naar aanleiding van vermeende misstanden, kleurden vele gebruikers van het Twitter platform hun avatar, het kleine plaatje naast hun naam, groen. De kleur van de Iraanse oppositie. Er was zelfs een site die het groen worden vergemakkelijkte. Vrijheid vind ik een groot goed. En de beperkingen die de buitenlandse nieuwsgading werden opgelegd was voor mij voldoende aanleiding om te vermoeden dat er iets mis was. Dus deed ik het ook. De poging tot revolutie was veel in het nieuws. Maar langzaam staakte het ook weer. Of de mensen in Iran hadden geen zin of fut meer, of alle communicatie kanalen waren dusdanig verstoord dat het organiseren van demonstraties te lastig werd, of de heersende macht had voldoende leiders opgepakt... hoe dan ook... het werd weer stiller rondom de Iraanse revolutie (ik ...

In his blog, Jure Cuhalev, poses the question: "What do you think about linking? Would you agree to get payed and valued based on number of incoming links to your personal blog?"

Well, first of all, my technorati rating is low... I'm not active in the blogosphere and all that... so personally I'd rather not like to get paid based on my incoming links ;), but that's besides the point.... his basic idea is interesting: incoming links may tell us something about our authorativeness.

I don't think so...

I don't believe that incoming links tell us something about our authorativeness. Let me start with an counter example that dismays, imho, this idea: Paris Hilton. I just linked to her. Does this mean I think she is an authority? No, personally I'd rather  conside...

Zoals de waard is, vertrouwt hij zijn gasten.

Neen, geen wrok te bekennen. Nog niet in ieder geval. Alles gaat goed. Ik huur een huisje samen met mijn vriendinnetje, in onze tuin staat een boompje, en onze buren hebben een beestje, die graag over onze glad gelakte vloer komt. Maar wat gebeurd er om ons heen? Hypotheek problemen in de VS wordt de huizencrisis, wordt vervolgens bankencrisis aldaar, wordt wereldwijde economsiche crisis... en nu zitten we, in wat heet, een vertrouwenscrisis. Maar we weten toch eigenlijk al veel langer, dat we in een vertrouwenscrisis zitten.

Het 'volk' vertrouwt immers de overheid niet (linkse lui, lullen maar niet doen), de regering vertrouwt de bevolking niet (wet bewaarplicht telecommunicatiegegevens, almaar toenemende aantal camera's op straat, anti-terrorisme wetgeving). De mensen vertrouwen de bedrijven niet meer (de rechtsbijstandsverzekering is de sterkst in populariteit stijgende verzekering, en aanbod van...

Me and my girlfriend will be walking with our backpacks along the coasts of Bretagne (France) for about two weeks. Don't expect any replies soon as I will try to avoid internet connected devices ;)

Short update: I defended my thesis successfully, just have to await my diploma before I can call myself officially Master of Science in Human-Technology Interaction (or something along these lines) ;)

I'm about to defend my thesis, if you are in the neighbourhood, you are welcome to visit it.

Titel: The Influence of the Auditory Environment on the Emotional Perception of Speech
Location: Eindhoven University of Technology, IPO building, room 1.18
Date: 16 May
Start: 14:00
Supervisors: Armin Kohlrausch (TU/e & Philips Research), Harm Belt (Philips Research), Dik Hermes (TU/e)

It is generally assumed that speech conveys information about how a person feels (see for an overview Scherer, 2003). Most communication, however, does not take place in isolation, in general there is context available as well. That context can play a role in the perception of emotion has been demonstrated before, e.g. by pr...

I started this blog with a simple plan in mind: every now and then I have been coming up with an idea that seems to be interesting enough to think about a bit more. Such ideas, I thought, should be worth sharing...

... and now I discover that most of my quick writeups aren't that good anyhow... or at best dated. I committed myself to posting only something that is good enough to post (and of course long delays between posts may force myself to lower this 'quality standard' (you're reading a good example)). So work is in progress, but I've got other things to do (planned date of graduation is getting close... quite close :o ) Just subscribe to the feed. That's what feeds are for :)